


against their better judgement

by gisho



Series: wherin Gil and Tarvek work some things out [3]
Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Bad BDSM Etiquette, Consensual Violence, Speculative Backstory, poor communication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 08:09:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13185936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gisho/pseuds/gisho
Summary: Wherin Gilgamesh and Tarvek beat each other senseless in the interest of getting things out in the open, and Zeetha introduces them to the idea of safewords.





	against their better judgement

**Author's Note:**

> This is based heavily on a scenario tanoraqui came up with on the GG Discord channels, so thanks for the inspiration! Thanks also to aunt_zelda for a quick and thoughtful beta.

\---

They're in the bath when it comes up - well, Tarvek is in the bath, washing off the grime of three days in Balan's Gap soothing the fragile egos of shipping magnates, and Gil is leaning on the edge of it listening to him complain, idly trailing one hand in the water. Tarvek leans forward to work the lather through his hair, and Gil catches sight of the hand-shaped bruise across his ribs, turned purple from the three days since he left it, looking worse than it had the next morning. He frowns, and presses his wet hand against it.

Tarvek hisses at the touch, and Gil jerks his hand back. "Sorry," he mumbles. "Sorry, didn't think it would still ..."

"You gave me that Thursday night. You enjoyed it tremendously." Tarvek glares over his steamed-over glasses. "Is your memory quite that bad?"

Gil stomps down an urge to tighten his hand and damage the blood vessels again, make Tarvek whimper in pain. Instead he says, "That must have hurt every time you took a deep breath."

Tarvek's eyes are closed now, soap dribbling down his sodden fringe. "It did. It was one of the few bright spots in a weekend full of noveau-riche psuedotechnical buffoons and _Dupree_." He loads bone-deep contempt on the name, and Gil wonders, not for the first time, why his lover holds such a grudge against his friend. Tarvek goes on, "We've been through this, Gilgamesh. You're allowed to hurt me. I won't break."

Not accidentally, at least. But something about Tarvek's casual trust, his flippant disregard for his own welfare, makes Gil's temper flare up. Which he suspects is the point. "I actually like you," he snaps, "against my better judgement, and so does Agatha. That - I could have broken your ribs and then how would you be glib at people? Just because you probably deserve to get beaten within an inch of your life doesn't mean I'm going to do it!" He crosses his arms and resolutely ignores that he's just gotten bathwater all over his shirt.

"Maybe you should."

"What?"

"Maybe you'd feel better not holding back," Tarvek blithely informs him, and drops underwater before Gil can answer or get a good look at his face.

It seems like he stays there longer than could really be explained by the necessity of rinsing his hair, so long Gil wonders if he's hidden some kind of disguised breathing apparatus, because three minutes may be survivable but thirty seconds is enough to hurt. Not even the Skifandrians know how not to need air. It's just distracting enough that when Tarvek comes back up, taking deep gasps, Gil pats him on the back instead of pursuing the issue. They've said worse to each other for no more reason than a bad mood, and besides, with his sodden hair hanging over his face Gil can't read Tarvek's mood half as well.

\--

Tarvek realized a while ago that he said things he should never admit, around Gilgamesh. It was embarrassing.

And absurd. And inevitable. He could use any number of idiot romantic metaphors, starting with moth-to-a-flame, but they wouldn't keep his tongue still. Better to admit these things, and let Gilgamesh think as badly of Tarvek as he can manage, which isn't much these days. He'll only make it worse if he sounds guilty.

He wouldn't have made a remark like that, except that he's spent three days being glib at people, as Gil would put it, and the more people he lies to the more he's reminded that Agatha and Gil like him very much _against their better judgement_. If Tarvek weren't such a weasel he would never have let them keep him around in any capacity but 'tame madboy'. But if he weren't such a weasel he might have deserved to be kept around.

He has no reason to think their better judgement will ever prevail. It's practically a political marriage by now. He has no reason, therefore, to encourage them to take out the least quiver of annoyance or disappointment on him before it can start to fester.

Still, on bad days, it's comforting to know the three of them can be honest with each other.

\--

The most embarrassing conversation Gil had had with his sister in - call it the past year, he doesn't keep track - was a little after the midsummer cheese festival. She'd spotted the rope burns on his arms one morning, laughed, and informed Agatha that she _thought_ her zumil would try out the Way of the Reniki someday, but Europan books really didn't know what they were talking about, did she want a few pointers? Agatha had stopped blushing when Zeetha made comments like that, at about the time she and Gil finally fell into bed, but Gil had never picked up the trick.

It somehow fell to Gil to explain Agatha hadn't left the marks. She enjoyed giving them orders, but that was as far down the Way of the Reniki as she cared to go.

So, Zeetha had patted Gil on the back and asked, "I know you know wound care, but what about safety signals? They don't mention them in novels here, but I havn't looked at all the Europan how-to books -"

"I havn't looked at any!" Gil had buried his face in his hands and wondered whether, if he asked for the floor to open up and swallow him, the Castle would oblige. "It's not like - where would we even find them?" And why would they have looked?

His sister thwapped him on the nose. "I don't know if that's _Sparks!_ or _Men!_ "

"And what do safety signals have to do with anything? We're not doing anything dangerous."

He was pretty sure the only reason Agatha wasn't giggling aloud was the hand pressed firmly to her mouth.

Zeetha gave a strangled noise of despair. " _Male Sparks._ Yes you are, even if it's just to your heads. Which is fine! Life is dangerous! But you should at least know what you're doing, right? Hey, Agatha, you think I should write a book on exotic Skifandrian sex practices? Not like I'm an expert, but at least all the boys I tied up knew how to get down in a hurry -"

Which was more about _his sister's sex life_ than Gil really cared to know, and he made a break for the door. The trouble was, she was just as fast as he was, and she was already dressed for morning training. There were shortcuts across the Castle Gil didn't care to take wearing nothing but a towel. They eventually had the embarrassing conversation in the seventh-floor linen closet, and Gil had blushed and fumed and finally suggested she go find Tarvek, who was probably still fast asleep. At best, still in his nightshirt doing his hair.

Gil liked to think he knew Tarvek well enough to tell when a _no_ was given in earnest. He'd stopped for them before. And for his own part - well. He's sturdy. The first time Tarvek had strapped him to a slab for a game had left him on edge and sick to his stomach, but he'd gotten to like it once he started to relax.

It was easy enough, to give in to someone you trusted. And he did trust Tarvek, despite everything. Because of everything.

But it's one thing to give someone a few bruises in the course of giving them a particularly satisfying orgasm, even on purpose, and another to hurt them for no more reason than wanting them to hurt. He doesn't know why Tarvek brought it up, sure as he is it was deliberate. Tarvek can't think Gil still resents him, not after two years working together and occasionally even slipping into a mutual fugue. And he can't possibly feel guilty, not so good at self-justification as Tarvek's always been.

Can he?

\--

Tarvek is modifying his watch. It's the sort of delicate, simple work he can do without really focusing on it; small motions that never reach past the elbow, watching the miniscule teeth slot together, gleaming in the electric light. More something he does to distract himself than something he does because it needs to be done. Good practice, too, for working in his element without dropping into a fugue. Too many Sparks don't have that kind of control.

The door doesn't creak. But the air displacement makes his curtains flutter, and he sighs as he sets down the tweezers. "Gilgamesh?"

"Who else would it be at four in the morning?" Gil sounds resigned.

"Violetta might have learned about reverse psychology and started making noise. Four in the morning, you said?"

There's a creak, like someone forgetting Tarvek's bed has a loose footboard. "And seven minutes," Gil informs him. "You don't have that thing back together."

"No, but I need to make sure the movement doesn't interfere." The hands spin to the truthful hour, the glass clicks shut, the key slips back against the mainspring. All is right with its world, just in time for him to complicate things. Tarvek reaches for his brasspoint.

Of course Gilgamesh doesn't wait quietly; he's never been good at patience. He spends a whole twenty seconds shifting back and forth on the bed before bursting out, "That watch must have more hands than Professor Allengard's spider-monkey by now."

"Mmm, it's still two shy," Tarvek admits. He teases out the bit of decorative beading where the stopwatch button will go, and sets it aside. This is taking more concentration than it should, but he's been awake for twenty-six hours and three of them were on an airship. "The zone clock is built into its face, so that doesn't count. And the slide rule is set into the casing."

"Why do you even have a slide rule on your watch when you can do the same maths in your head?"

"It was an interesting engineering challenge to make it usable. Why are you here when you could be working on your flying machine?"

"I just wanted - " Gilgamesh snaps his jaw shut; he must have noticed Tarvek was trying to catch him in the rhythm of question-and-answer. "You've never complained before."

He has, but never in earnest. He's not complaining now. He's waiting for Gilgamesh to grow tired of the silence. The electric light casts its soft, cool glow over Tarvek's hands, and the tiny brass watch-gears are less audible than his own heartbeat.

Eventually Gil says, "Do you really think I would _feel better_ if I beat you up?"

He expected Gilgamesh to be fretting about that. That he got together the nerve to mention it so soon, though, that's a surprise. Tarvek sets down his watch on its face and takes a deep breath; the bruise still hurts, a comforting reminder that Tarvek is worth something to someone. "I think you would find it cathartic," he answers. "After all, I probably deserve a slow, hideous death, but that would upset Agatha. At least you -" Tarvek breaks off at Gilgamesh's hiss, like water dripping on a hot engine casing. "What?"

"Stop being so sanctimonious. Fishing for compliments. Whatever you're doing." Gilgamesh's voice is a low growl, and Tarvek is just distracted enough by the anger in it that Gilgamesh's hands descending on his shoulders are a complete surprise; he tenses on instinct. "It doesn't matter what you deserve," Gil goes on, "because you're not _getting_ it. You get to spend your life cleaning up the mess we made instead. Aren't you lucky?"

 _We_?

There are words he could say to that, but none of the words seem to suit. Instead he answers the threat as if it were an embrace, leaning back and turning until he can almost listen to Gilgamesh's pounding heartbeat.

It works; Gil sighs, short and sharp, and his hands drop and refold into a knot over Tarvek's breastbone. He mutters, "If we're talking about who deserves what, you might as well start hitting _me_."

This is so far from what Tarvek had expected, he has to take a few breaths to answer, and what comes out is the sort of raw honesty he should never allow himself, not if he wants Gilgamesh to keep thinking he's worth the effort of caring for. "Most of what I hate you for isn't your fault."

Gil answers, "Oh? So you still hate me?"

He says it three-quarters like a weather report, one-quarter like a wounded dog, and Tarvek grits his teeth against the urge to tell some comforting lie. "More than you deserve," he says instead, "for things you couldn't control, in ways no good person should think."

"Since when have you cared about being a good  
person?"

"Since Agatha let me know it was an option."

From the way Gil's arms tense Tarvek thinks he's goaded him into a blow, but after a moment they tighten instead, driving the breath from his lungs. Tarvek tries not to wheeze. If Gilgamesh is trying to hurt him, well, he has enough to hate Tarvek for. Very deliberately, he forces his hands to open, and the brasspoint and crosshead screwdriver fall to the desk, with no more clatter than his pounding pulse. Gilgamesh doesn't let go.

"I do love you more," Tarvek informs him, forcing the words out with a ragged breath. "I'm not very rational about you."

"Yeah." Gilgamesh lets go, reaches up with one hand to ruffle his hair, because apparently he can't possibly resist the urge to be difficult even in the middle of a serious discussion. "Would _you_ find it cathartic? The chance to hit me as much as you wanted? Because I could take it -"

"You don't know how much I want," Tarvek interrupts, because apparently this is the moment for dangerous soul-baring revelations and because, as suddenly and horribly tempting as the thought is - Gilgamesh tied down and helpless, not fighting it, Gilgamesh screaming in pain while whip marks turn his skin red - no. He's not supposed to think like that. Not unless Gil wants it as badly as Tarvek does.

"I can take it," Gil repeats. "It's only fair, if I'm allowed to hurt you."

"You've only given me some bruises. _Fair_ would be if you did beat me within an inch of my life."

"Well, wasn't that what you asked for in the first place?"

Tarvek hadn't known, then, whether he meant the offer sincerely. But the idea catches on some of the dark, rotten places in his head, and he thinks Gil wants the chance more than he wants to admit. Gilgamesh has never been good at _wanting_ things. It would only be fair, if they're both getting hurt. So most of what Tarvek feels is smug satisfaction as he offers, "So, we take turns?"

Gilgamesh takes a deep breath before he answers, "Fine. But I'm going first."

He doesn't do anything with it - it would be insulting - but Tarvek tightens his fingers around the dropped screwdriver, until the engraved curls on its handle leave ridges on his skin. "I have two conditions."

"Alright, we can negotiate." For some reason Gil sounds more confident now, as if this were familiar ground, which it can't possibly be, because how many people are sick enough to ask someone to torture them? "What are your conditions?"

"We don't mention this to Agatha, not _ever_ , we pick some time when it won't be odd to avoid undressing around her for however long it takes the bruises to go away. She's a good person and she doesn't - Agatha doesn't need to know."

Gilgamesh sighs, and this time he doesn't try to disguise the thump as he sits down. Tarvek wonders if he should turn around, but even with the electric lamp at his back he's not sure he wants Gil to see his face. Gil's next words are almost petulant. "She understood the rope thing -"

"That was about sex. This is _not_."

Eventually Gil says, "Fine. We don't mention anything to Agatha. Second condition?"

"Nothing with a blade." It's probably not fair to ask, Tarvek had been the one who said _nothing with a lock_ when they had the incredibly awkward conversation with Agatha, but he doesn't want to actually start gibbering in terror.

"I wasn't going to ask." Gil sounds a little surprised by the idea. "That would show longer than a few days."

If that's why he thinks Tarvek is asking - fine. The truth would only get laughter or pity.

\--

Gil slips back into bed beside Agatha, feeling only a little guilty, and she mumbles something in her sleep and rolls toward him. She always ends up lying halfway on top of him, which is weirdly comforting. She sleeps like a rock when she's not sleepwalking. Maybe it's a side effect of having nothing to feel guilty for. Gil hopes so. Tarvek is right, she doesn't need to get dragged into their - whatever it is they're doing. What are they doing?

Working some things out. Right.

He can take it, he knows he can take it, and - there are enough things Tarvek hates him for that actually _are_ his fault, starting with getting him kicked off the Castle. He hadn't known his father would do that. He hadn't known what his friend was going back to. He hasn't, since he found out, stopped wishing that had gone differently.

And then in Paris - well, he hadn't meant to run over Tarvek with a herd of giant mushroom creatures, or get him kidnapped by pirates, or leave him deaf for two weeks after that mess at the Corondon Conservatory - those are little things, all water under the bridge now. But there's one thing Tarvek would have every right to hate him for, that Gil has winced at the memory of ever since he found out what happened to Anevka Sturmvoraus. When Colette told him Tarvek had left in a hurry and said he wouldn't be back, Gil hadn't worried about him at all. He'd dragged Wooster out for a celebratory drink, instead.

Tarvek almost certainly doesn't know that.

Agatha mumbles something and starts patting the bedspread, and Gil grabs hold of her questing hand before she can prod him anywhere uncomfortable. Their fingers don't line up very neatly; her hands are narrower. The motion is enough to make her lift her head and blink, and the incomprehensible mumble turns into, "Gil?"

"Who else would it be?"

He tries for flippant, but he must not hit it, because she frowns. "Were you in the conservatory again?"

"Just calibrating the solar collectors," he says, which was true an hour ago. The weasel must be rubbing off on him - no. No, he's just doing what Tarvek asked and not mentioning anything. "Go back to sleep, it's not morning yet."

Agatha sighs, but the sigh turns into a comfortable exhale as she lays her head down again, and then to a soft, breathy snore. Gil fits an arm around her shoulder and resigns himself to staring at the ceiling until morning.

\--

Tarvek used to sleep well, if he wasn't interrupted, but the long nights in the lab trying to piece together his sister's scarred neurosystem had left him with a tendency to wake up in a cold sweat from whatever guilty horrors his subconscious saw fit to bring up. He wasn't so careless as to make noise, though, and if Anevka noticed she stayed quiet. He would lie still, and count the steady soft thumps of the engine set into her catafalque, and watch the steady green glow that declared its systems were functional. That was why he was in Anevka's bed, after all, in case something went wrong with her systems overnight.

He could fix that, but he could do nothing for her mind. In Paris it was called _post-vital personality drift_ , and it had a name at all only because people were _delusional_ and thought the Hurwoods' wind-up junk preserved enough to matter. Anevka was no toy clank core, but there was still an edge to her cruelty now, something missing from the girl who took apart his pets with the innocent light of discovery in her eyes. He found her one evening, ceramic face still fixed in her constant half-smile, meditatively beating one of her cowering bearers across the shoulders with her bare metal hand. He had seen her strike maidservants before - one or two sharp slaps for carelessness, before she lost interest - but something about the clockwork efficiency of her motions made his gorge rise, and he yelled out before he could stop himself, "Anevka! You shouldn't!"

She turned her blank face to him, but she stopped. "Why?"

"You'll misalign your joints," he lied. She was better made than that.

"Oh, very well," she said, and the next blow was lighter, but it crackled in a way that made the man cry out and jerk away. "Dismissed. You three, take him away."

The other bearers hurried their erstwhile colleague out, half-dragging him, and Tarvek leaned against the wall and tried to string the next set of lies together. He never did find out what the man had done to offend her.

It shouldn't have been notable, in a string of tense wrung-out days peppered by occasional relentless terror, but he kept thinking of it at inopportune times. Whenever Anevka moved her wrist a certain way. Whenever he caught himself about to scream at someone who couldn't scream back. That was anyone except his father and Anevka and the White Ladies, the people he didn't dare make angry.

He hasn't thought of it in years. Most of three years, by Tarvek's own clock.

Four days ago he lost his temper with a piece of wing joint and started calling Von Zinzer a semicephalous brachiopod for no more reason than that he was in range, and Von Zinzer had responded by swatting him with a broom before he could gather his wits and apologize. Gilgamesh almost fell over laughing. Tarvek still isn't sure what to think.

He has to think Gilgamesh knows what he's doing, though. He has to let go and trust him. It should be easy by now.

\--

It's three days later. Agatha is busy setting up the harvest festival; Zeetha is busy trying to talk Vanamonde into adding some traditional Skifandrian dances, and Vanamonde, Gil suspects, is busy wrestling temptation.

And Gil is breathing very carefully as Tarvek wraps a length of chain around his wrist. He'd wrapped a piece of old bedsheet around Gil's wrist first, muttering something about _obvious_ marks, and Gil is pretty sure he oiled the chain. There's something endearing about how meticulous he's being.

Tarvek presses the length of chain into Gil's hand before he hooks the end back to the wall, and scowls. "Hold _still_ ," he declares, and ventures a halfhearted grab at the other arm. "Or would you rather try and fight me? I don't think you could win one-handed."

It might be interesting to try, but - not this time. Gil lets Tarvek stretch his arm out and wrap the chain around his other wrist, and grabs hold of it as Tarvek steps back, looking at him over his glasses with the expression of a man who's just built a giant construct and is having second thoughts about flipping the switch.

Tarvek asks, "Comfortable?"

Gil rolls his eyes. "For _now_ , yes."

"And if you need to catch your breath -"

"Yell _mercy_. I remember." Gil leans back, feeling the chill of the stone wall against his back. It's probably dark outside by now. He can't tell in from here; there are no windows, and the only light is from a couple of dragon-shaped lamps on sticks, which he suspects Tarvek dragged in for the sake of atmosphere. Their light is yellow and flickering. It makes Tarvek's skin look jaundiced as he slowly peels off his jacket, and waistcoat, and rolls up his sleeves. He's taking his time about it. Gil resists the urge to tap his foot.

Tarvek is just _looking_ at him now, face carefully blank. He doesn't like that look. Gil tugs at the chains and growls, "Don't tell me you're losing your nerve."

" _What?_ "

From the sudden tension in Tarvek's shoulders, he hit a sensitive spot. Gil grins and keeps going. "I guess I should have expected it. You've always been so stuck-up and poncy, no wonder you can't admit -"

The blow is so sudden he doesn't even see it. For a moment he doesn't see anything but sparks, radiating pain where his skull slammed into the wall. Some distant part of his mind, the parts that's always doing calculations, offers up that it's good his head was only three centimeters from the wall; at twelve the acceleration might have been enough to crack bone. Most of his mind is too busy reeling in dismay. He keeps forgetting Tarvek can actually fight.

"That's rich coming from the plague of Paris!" Tarvek's words are a low hiss coming from somewhere far away, outside Gil's head. "You and your harem of nightclub tarts wouldn't know _stuck-up_ if it slapped you with a glove and demanded satisfaction at dawn! You have _no sense of propriety!_ "

That's punctuated by a blow to the ribs that drives Gil's breath from his lungs. Good. Two black eyes would be a lot to explain. The chains have gone taught, he can't help but try to hit back, but that's why he insisted on the chains. He forces himself to laugh with his next breath, as much as it hurts, just to egg Tarvek on.

Maybe he shouldn't have, because the next blow is in the same place. "And you never knew when something was _none of your business_ ," that's more of a hiss. It's followed by an open-handed slap across the same sore spot. "Did you even know your stupid prying around that abandoned florist shop almost got Seffie disowned? I had to call in a favor from Grandmother."

He hadn't, he'd thought Xersephina was obviously an innocent victim of that one, and his noise of confusion vanishes into a gasp as Tarvek drives his fist in on the other side of Gil's ribcage.

The pounding blood makes the next few accusations hard to follow, and the steady train of slaps makes it harder. Gil thinks he knows the general theme, anyway. Innocent bystanders, excessive property damage, failure to consider consequences. All from his first year in Paris, because that was all Tarvek had been there for. He tries closing his eyes against the pounding blood in his head; it doesn't work, and he open them again in time to catch, " -bianca's Mate."

Oh, right, that mess with Terracciano. At least he'd gotten Zola out before she got put in check, although in retrospect that might be a bad thing.

Tarvek continues, breathing hard, "And you were so _sure_ Colette liked adventuring you drove a _giant mimmoth_ through her bedroom at three in the morning, when there was a perfectly good strangler vine three blocks away!" He adds two more punches, then lets his hands drop, making a noise that might be a gasp or a hiss.

There's rather a lot of pain by now, but he's had worse. It's not even difficult to grin. "So chivalrous of you. Nothing personal?"

"Oh, the personal comes later." Tarvek adjusts his glasses, then neatly, almost calmly, drives a fist into his solar plexus. The pain explodes outward like a flash-grenade. "For _example_. You accused me of being an agent of the Other in front of half your general staff."

He had, hadn't he? He'd thought as much, for a second, but it was still an ill-timed accusation. Well, Gil's never been much of a weasel. He tenses for the blow, but it doesn't come. Instead Tarvek hisses, "As if I would hurt Agatha. As if I wouldn't sooner rip the beating heart from my chest than risk her safety."

They said no blades, they agreed on that, but Tarvek is digging his fingernails into the already-bruising spot on Gil's ribs just over his heart, and Gil thinks he must have broken the skin, he can feel something trickling down his chest. Unless that's just sweat. He could be sweating, for all his spine is pressed to a cold stone wall. His hands are white-knuckled on the chains, the only reason he hasn't struck back before he could think it through, and his toes are trying to curl into the floor. Too much sensation, too little breath. Gil forces himself to gasp against his battered ribs, and feels the sweat prickling against Tarvek's hair.

It's enough of a cue for Tarvek to lift his head from Gil's shoulder, glasses knocked askew and face red with exertion even in the dim yellow light. "You dropped me off an airship," Tarvek says, and it comes out a plaintive moan. He doesn't straighten his glasses.

Gil doesn't say anything; arguing his case would be against the spirit of the thing, and he can't bring himself to taunt someone who looks so wounded.

"Gilgamesh. How long did it take for you to start trusting me again?" And that comes with a punch to the stomach, hard enough to bruise his kidneys. It doesn't hurt as much as he expected it to; the adrenaline rush is starting to help.

"Three days," he manages.

Tarvek doesn't answer right away. When he does it sounds hoarse. "You're lying."

"Three days. I made your potion, didn't I? And I gave it to Dupree." And in the long lonely years afterward when Dupree was the weight keeping his aim steady, Gil had given it to everyone he could, as many as he could make it for, and it was never enough, there was never time, and if Gil keeps thinking about that he'll hate himself as much as Tarvek hates him, and as rationally. He clenches his fists on the chains, and waits.

" _Dupree_ ," Tarvek growls, and drives his fist in again. Gil finds himself making an inarticulate noise, somewhere between a moan and a yelp. "You know, the _last_ time I jumped out of an airship was because I thought it was better than letting her try out her new knife _one more time_? But I guess you'd know a lot about getting people _thrown off airships_!" It's a ringing yell, the kind that makes Gil grateful for the castle's thick walls, and he follows it up with a knee to the groin.

Alright, that hurts. It hurts enough that Gil is too busy not screaming to complain as Tarvek pulls one of the chains off its hook, grabs him by the shoulder, spins him into the wall. He ends up kneeling, hands together over his head and cheek pressed to the stone.

He should have seen that coming.

The pain recedes a little, just enough for the idea of crying mercy to drift across his mind, but Gil tells himself he can take this. If Tarvek needs it, if it brings him some comfort, he can endure this.

The bite of the crop is a little surprising. He'd wonder where Tarvek got it, but in this place he could have found one in the linen cupboard. Gil tries to take a deep breath as it comes down on his shoulders. No more accusations? Tarvek surely hasn't run out of things to hate him for.

But he must have only been gathering his thoughts. Tarvek bursts out, "Were you _proud_ of yourself?" He swings again - what does that make, five? It must be a bad sign that Gil's losing track. "Did it feel good, ratting me out for something you helped me with? Getting the better of me just when I was sticking my neck out to _help_ you?" The blows seem to come at random now, disconnected from his words. Gil wants to protest that it wasn't like that, it wasn't like that at all, but he holds still. There's a wavering edge to Tarvek's words by now, and Gil is glad not to have to look at his face.

"Or were you just -" thwack - "trying so hard  
-" the next one is across his ribs - "to make your father happy - " thwack - "that you didn't _care_?" Is Tarvek _crying_? He sounds like he's crying. Gil shivers as the next blow lands on his shoulders again, tracing the line of one whose sting had almost started to fade. Tarvek goes on, "Of course you did, he was so much more important."

That's a sob behind the words, and the combination hits harder than the first punch did. Gil mumbles into the wall, "Not like that."

If Tarvek hears, he doesn't answer. Instead he says, "You had your father, and he wanted to keep you _safe_." Gil arches into the blow. He can't help it. "And I had _mine_ \- " Tarvek interrupts himself this time, with a messy, gulping sob that makes Gil want to reach through time and shake his eight-year-old self by the ears, except that he remembers being so miserable then.

He's hurting for it now, that only seems fair, and he tries to take deep breaths as Tarvek snaps, "He wasn't even angry with me. He didn't _notice_ , he was neck-deep in some experiment."

The next blows - still hurt, on some level, but Gil wishes they were harder. Maybe it's the adrenaline, or maybe it's fifteen years of concentrated guilt shaking loose, all that time spent twisting himself into what his father wanted and not noticing what else he damaged on the way.

And for what, exactly? It wasn't enough. Nothing could have been enough. His father still got caught in the Other's machinations, and the Empire still fell apart without him, and Gil - he drew in around Mechanicsburg, and he gambled the lives of his loyal troops and sold the peaceful lives of his citizens and told himself it was worth it, if the Other made another move.

"I couldn't do anything about it," Tarvek is whispering, and Gil realizes with a start that he's missed the last few sentences, too lost in his bitter self-pity and too desperate for the next lash to care what words come with it. "It was too much risk just saving Violetta."

Three hits in quick succession, on the same tender place parallel to his spine. Gil bites his lip.

Tarvek is still crying, Gil can hear it. That doesn't seem right. "And everyone _else_ in my family was too busy trying to kill each other to care! Lady Vrin thought I was _useful_ , and she ordered the Smoke Knights to actually _try_ not to get me killed, and that's how I lost a dozen in three years. A _family record._ " He must have made a dozen strikes while he said it. Gil is fairly sure he broke the skin. "That's how it worked, that's how everything works, just be _useful_ and maybe they'll let you live - "

"Sorry," Gil says. He's not sure what he's apologizing for.

Tarvek goes still at that, just long enough for Gil to wish he'd start hitting him again. But then he does, steadily and easily for all his voice is broken into ragged sobs. "I thought you were my _friend_ ," Tarvek saying, in some distant space behind the steady, regular strokes. "I thought you were the one person I could really trust. But there was nobody then, nobody at all, and now it's all so easy, isn't it?"

Gil thinks, in a detached mathematical sort of way, that it's stopped hurting. It's not adrenaline, or not _just_ adrenaline. The whipping might as well be happening to someone else. His body is slack against the wall.

He's losing track of the words. He thinks Tarvek mentions Agatha's name, but the sound is coming from somewhere distant, and the blows from somewhere very close.

How many does that make? He hasn't been counting.

"And if she hadn't -" There aren't any more blows. Just Tarvek sobbing against his shoulder.

Gil thinks he should say something, at least make a stab at being comforting, because the idea was for him to be the one hurting. But he'd have to move to speak, and he's not sure his muscles would respond to commands right now. He tries to grab the chain, just to test the hypothesis. Nothing happens. Right. Trying again seems like too much effort, and he lets his mind drift back into the dark.

"Gilgamesh?"

There's a clinking noise, somewhere back in the real world. His arms aren't stretched out overhead anymore, and without the support his body slowly starts to topple sideways into a heap, but something catches it. "Gilgamesh," the voice repeats, sounding distinctly annoyed. "You were supposed to _yell_ if I went too far."

He was, wasn't he? Gil thinks he feels a stab of guilt, but it's as distant as everything else.

"You absurd heroic idiot," the voice goes on. Tarvek, that's Tarvek's voice. There's a blanket around his shoulders now, and a hand running through his hair. He can feel that. It feels good. Tarvek sighs. "You can't lie here with your head in my lap like a fainting ingenue forever, you _do_ have to get up long enough to get to bed. It doesn't have to be _your_ bed, there's a spare bedroom down the hall, but you have to get that far." The hand tightens in his hair. "Eventually. We can just sit here until you catch your breath."

Breath isn't the problem, Gil wants to say, but he's not sure he can speak just yet. He tightens his hand. On Tarvek's knee, it feels like. Oh. Good. Muscular control back online.

Tarvek ruffles his hair. His voice is still a little damp and ragged as he goes on, "Just so you know, I don't blame you for any of it."

\---

The room down the hall was probably servant's quarters when anyone lived there, which, this being Castle Heterodyne, means the fireplace is only flanked by two grinning cat-size monsters in relief, not a full menagerie, and the bedcurtains are wool. Gilgamesh is staring at the flickering hearth, but his eyes are focused and his breaths deep.

"So," he finally says, voice almost sounding normal again. "Do you feel better?"

Tarvek wishes he could misinterpret that, but it wouldn't be fair. They have to be honest. He keeps stroking Gil's hair, steady and comfortable, and admits, "I think so. Ask me in the morning."

The damned heroic idiot must be feeling better than he looks, because he starts laughing. It's a quiet, bubbly sort of laugh, almost silent; Tarvek can feel his shoulders shaking more than hear it.

"It's not that funny," Tarvek mutters, and hates himself for the blush. Only two people could make him feel so absurd. Well, possibly three, if Violetta was having a good day. "I didn't know I was still angry about half of what I was yelling like an imbecile about. Give me a little time to think."

"You're not an imbecile." Gil snorts. "Well, you are, but not about anything you were yelling about."

It's just their usual banter, it must mean Gilgamesh is feeling better, and there's no reason the return blows shouldn't start right away. Tarvek tightens his arms on Gil's  
shoulders and doesn't say anything. It's been years. There's no one here he could hurt with a careless word, and there's no one he needs to be afraid of, and it felt so much better than it ever should to scream at someone and hit them over and over and know that when it was done, they would curl up together in front of the fire until they felt human again.

Gilgamesh, he eventually notices, has a hand on his thigh, uncomfortably close to the femoral artery like a horrible parody of checking for pulse. Tarvek elects to ignore it.  
Eventually Gil mutters, as casually as if it made any sense, "And I can't figure out why there's a bedroom down here. We're in the basement. It's all cellars and dungeons."

"How should I know? Maybe somebody got sick of the noise upstairs." Tarvek shrugs. At least talking about something completely irrelevant is distracting. "It's not as if the rest of the floor plan makes sense."

"True." Gilgamesh looks slightly cheered. "And we got all the way down here without hitting any traps except that thing with the axe, so it's not that inconvenient. Unless the Castle's just mellowed out, do you think?"

"The Castle," Tarvek growls, "has learned that the Heterodyne no longer considers dodging rains of spikes a vital job skill for the housekeeping staff. It only plays with _us_ because it knows we'll be fine." He winds his fingers back into Gilgamesh's hair, avoiding the bruise. That had been - careless. A black eye can be explained away as a minor lab accident, but just a little harder and Gil would have been knocked out. Tarvek wonders if he was knocked loopy; that would explain why he didn't have the wit to call a halt before his mind slipped out of gear. Unless, of course, it was Gil-standard reckless bravery. He has no concept of self-preservation. Just to make sure, Tarvek continues, "Which you _aren't_ right now, by the way, so we're spending the night right here."

"It's not that bad," Gil protests, as Tarvek had expected. "You didn't even break the skin."

"You're lucky I didn't break a rib. I can't believe you agreed to this."

"I trust you," Gilgamesh says, as if that were the only relevant consideration. Tarvek has to close his eyes before he says something stupid. Or does something stupid, like burst into tears again.

\--

Agatha notices the black eye, of course, but she accepts his mutter about a misbehaving balance arm and tells him there's still some salve in her toolbox. Zeetha isn't so easy to put off. Five passes into their pre-lunch sparring session, she drops her batons, folds her arms, and glares. "Alright, what did you do, get run over by a clicking-horse?"

"Er?"

"Your breathing is shallow, there's something wrong with your shoulders, and you kicked the staff up instead of bending over to 'grab it. Also, you have a black eye and your shirt's still on. Did you insult someone's hat?"

"It's nothing that bad, I can keep going." Gil swings the staff up to prove it. "I'll be fine tomorrow."

"Yeah, but it isn't tomorrow." She grabs the batons again, rolling her eyes.

"It will be. Can we get on with it?"

"Sure." Zeetha points a baton at him with a sudden bright grin. "Let's make things interesting. How about a bet?"

"Bet on what?"

Zeetha's grin hasn't wavered. "Who gets the first hit. If I get you, you have to stop dancing around and tell me what happened."

There's about a three-in-five chance he could beat Zeetha in a fair, friendly fight. Maybe a little less. He has the reach on her, and he can shrug off blows, but she's lighter on her feet. If they're only fighting until one of them gets hit, Gil's odds are worse. He'll just have to drive her off. "If I get you first," he offers, "you have to tell me the true story of the Snake Guardian Incident."

She gasps dramatically. "Ooh, you drive a hard bargain!"

"Well?"

"It's a deal," his sister announces, and dives toward him in an easy flowing movement.

They've been fighting whenever they're both in Mechanicsburg at once, and by now they know each others' moves. Gil ducks left, deflects three syncopated blows; it's the familiar first steps of a dance. Zeetha spins out of the way and then back in, almost too fast to follow. Gil manages to block her, but he can feel his ribs complaining. He tries a sweep. She jumps over the staff, landing hard, and he has to step back to avoid her answering lunge.

His sister told Gil once that he fought like a Skifandrian. His father must have picked up the style while he was there. Of course, that also means Zeetha knows all Gil's tricks. For example, the shadow feint to her right hand she doesn't even gesture at blocking, and her batons are crossed in front of her shoulder before he can land the real blow.

They follow each other into a spin, mock-blades tight together. They're both breathing hard, wearing matching fanged grins, their bare feet hammering on the floor as their dance takes them in a full circle. Zeetha breaks first, leaping back and throwing the staff away at once, taking advantage of how Gil isn't leaning into it. Maybe this was a bad idea.

He can at least follow, and he does, making great sweeping slices that his sister leaps over, or backs away from, or once, improbably, ducks. She uses the low motion to swing at his knees, and he has to retreat to avoid it. That's enough to change the direction of the fight; the crack of wood-on-wood is almost as fast as their footwork now, the sort of drumming that would make a real blade go blunt in the hands of most fighters, or get sliced in half if an amatuer went against a Skifandrian warrior. Skifandrian blades go through anything. Gil could never figure out how that worked.

He knows what Zeetha does next, though, even though he can't counter it. He swings wide, and instead of leaping back Zeetha just leaps up, higher and faster than a human should be able to, flipping backwards right over his head. He tries to spin and catch her, but before he's halfway around the baton cracks on the back of his skull, right on top the bruise he had already.

The idea occurs to Gil, as he grits his teeth against the sudden blinding pain, that Zeetha was taunting him. She could have hit him earlier, just not _there_.

"Whoo," Zeetha says, and snatches the staff from his still-tense hands. "You're worse off than you looked. Want some coffee before you spill the beans?"

"Yes please," Gil mutters. He can't believe he fell for that.

They end up getting lunch brought down to Gil's lab, and having it picnic-style spread out under the wing of his latest experimental model. It feels like something children might do, nostalgic without a reference point.

There was nothing childish about last night, though, and Gil explains in halting phrases between blushes while Zeetha's expression shifts from curiosity to confusion to dismay. Eventually he winds to a halt, at about the point in the narrative where he had collapsed on the floor. He's not sure if the twisted expression on his sister's face is her fighting back laughter, or trying not to look disgusted.

Well, fifty-fifty isn't bad odds. "Go ahead and laugh," he tells her, resigned. "I know we're ridiculous."

"That's one word for it. I wasn't going to laugh, though."

Gil would feel bad for rubbing her nose in his perversion, except, well, she _asked_. "Yell at me, then."

"That neither. I know when I'm out of my depth, and _this_ -" she taps the bruise on his skull with two fingers, and he winces - "is out of my depth. I do the kind of games where if someone's crying, it means you messed up something awful."

"I remember. You told me all about the Way of the Reniki. And gave me that lecture on safety signals. Which we _did_ set up."

"But obviously didn't _use_ or you wouldn't be such a mess!" She slaps him with a roll, then bites off half of it, decisively.

Gil settles for rolling his eyes and wiping the butter off his nose. "Yes, I know, you're the expert and I'm an idiot."

"I'm _not_ an expert, that's the _point_." Zeetha throws her hands theatrically in the air. "I know how to fry dumplings, that doesn't make me an expert cook. I know how to tie someone up and spank them and _not_ leave bruises, that's pretty basic. Except in Europa, apparently. But that all depends on stopping if it stops being fun. Like knowing how to fall before you start sparring. Hurting someone on purpose -" She sighs heavily.

"I shouldn't have mentioned it," Gil mutters. Somehow conversations with Zeetha always end up like this. She has a knack for getting under his skin and pulling out things he was trying to hide from himself.

"No, no, I asked. And you can tell me anything, you know that, Gil?" She reaches over with the hand that isn't full of dumpling to pat him on the shoulder. "We're family. Maybe I can't help, but I can always listen."

He's blushing now more from sentiment than embarrassment. "Thank you." And - "I'd say the same, except you always have your head on straight."

"You didn't see me before I met Agatha." Her expression turns rueful. "I was a _mess_. I thought I was losing my mind."

Gil catches her hand before it can slip from his shoulder. They're almost sitting knee-to-knee, and it's tricking him into confidences, but that's alright. He might as well take advantage. "But you managed once there was someone who needed you, right?"

Their fingers tighten together, and Zeetha almost grins. "Saying something like that counts as helping."

"Thanks."

The touching moment has a few seconds to sink in, but Zeetha doesn't really do sentiment. She slips her hand away and grabs the mustard pot. "I won't tell you and Tarvek what to do," she declares, "they're your bodies. But at least try to go easy on him. He's _brilliant_ at dodging but he can't take a punch like you."

"Wait. You fought him? When?"

"Just after the cheese festival." Zeetha beams. "It was fun. I got to swing off the chandeliers. Want to come watch next time?"

"If there's a safe place to stand," Gil murmurs in horrified fascination. Between Tarvek's Smoke Knight moves and Zeetha's habit of flying kicks, that might take a big room.

\--

Tarvek manages, somewhat to his surprise, to sleep well every night for a week. Nothing is on fire that isn't supposed to be, nobody is at war that he could plausibly talk out of it, and Zeetha is hastily teaching a dozen local volunteers one of the non-sacred variations of the Sacred Dance of Ashtara, meant to be done by amateurs or actors. She doesn't press the issue of a rematch.

He takes advantage of his clear head to sketch a few dozen festival outfits for Agatha, enough to pick from for a few years to come - after that _monstrosity_ she wore to her first Harvest Festival it's practically a _public service_ \- and make sure this year's is ready. It's a cloth-of-gold peplos with trilobite pins at the shoulders, and she looks so elegant and untouchable in it that he finds himself acting like Gilgamesh, which is to say, sighing and babbling and flat-out not _noticing_ she's trying to seduce him until the gown is an elegant pile on the floor. Gil, meanwhile, is laughing fit to burst.

Zeetha gets her rematch the morning before the Snail Roundup. There was a time when Tarvek would have dealt with a fight like this - any fight for less stakes than his own life - by tripping over his own feet and trying to run away, and to actually hit back in practice, against a human instead of a fencing-clank, goes against years of habit. But Agatha and Gil are watching. He dodges enough to force Zeetha into a few dramatic leaps, and one impressive parry that would have left a hole in the wall, if they'd been using real swords. That seems like a good cue to miscount his steps, and he goes over with the next blow, springing backwards but still catching the follow-through in the air, and fetching up against the wall, where Zeetha can plant her foot on her chest and her stick against his neck and ask, grinning, "Yield?"

"Yield," he says. That landing looked much harder than it was. If, say, anything else painful were to happen to his back, it would hardly be strange for him to spend a few days moving stiffly and wincing.

He manages to whisper as much to Gilgamesh in the hallway afterwards, and watches him blush and scowl with smug satisfaction. The low growl of, "Not yet, I'm still thinking," is less satisfying.

What is there to think about?

\--

Gil had very nearly talked himself out of it completely, but then he watched Tarvek lose a fight to his sister _deliberately_ \- well, he's almost certain it was deliberate - and he remembers how _insufferable_ the man is. Maybe that's a bad reason to want to hurt someone. Fine. Better his bad reasons be for private quarrels, and better he get it out of his system. It was Tarvek's idea anyway. Sometimes Gil thinks he _enjoys_ getting hurt.

Gil at least _wanted_ to get hurt, by the time his turn was up.

He thinks, the more he thinks about it, that it would be cathartic. If Gil thinks about it logically, he knows the mess Tarvek left for him to clean up was because Tarvek made the best of no good choices, that standing on principle would only have gotten Tarvek blasted to bits, that the Empire has had more use out of Tarvek's lies than it would have had from his honesty. If he lets his emotions seep in, well, he still hates Tarvek almost as much as he hates the fanatics who left him so wounded. Aaronev Wilhelm Sturmvoraus is too dead to take out his anger on.

Tarvek is still there, all the time. Tarvek asked him to.

Which just leaves how and when. He's not going go hunting for a whip; he'll do this with his own hands. And there's no such thing as good timing. Tarvek is the sneaky one; let him make it look natural that he's avoiding Agatha's bed for a week. Gil will just have to make sure she's distracted.

By the Harvest Festival, for example. No need to wait, now his bruises have faded.

\--

So: the snail race is on, Agatha is out late with Van enjoying the night street fair, and her consorts are in the basement again, one of them already half-undressed with chains wrapped around his arms.

And Gil is running a hand down the chains, asking, "You remember -"

"Yell _mercy_ if it's too much. I remember." Tarvek remembers standing where Gil is standing, a horrible ironic echo. It's much too late to be afraid.

Gilgamesh sighs, hand resting over Tarvek's wrist as if he were checking his pulse. "Zeetha did remind me you're more fragile than me. I don't want to do too much damage."

He'd take offense at the implication of fragility, but Tarvek's too busy being horrified by - "You told Zeetha?"

"She noticed I wasn't moving right!" Gilgamesh throws his hands in the air, with his usual absurd theatricality. "Relax, _Agatha_ has no idea. But I thought Zeetha might have something useful to say. This feels really strange, you know."

"And did she?" Tarvek  
slumps against the wall, letting the cold seep into his shoulders.

"She reminded me not to break you."

It shouldn't be Tarvek right now who feels anger rising in his chest until it overflows into an taunt. "I'm not _breakable_ , Gilgamesh. There is nothing you can do to me that I won't recover from."

"Huh? There's lots of things," Gil answers, as casually as if they were chatting over tea. Then he drives his fist into Tarvek's ribs.

 _Comforting_ is exactly the wrong word for the pain, but nonetheless Tarvek feels comforted. A blow still counts as a touch. He takes shallow breaths, and doesn't laugh. As long as Gilgamesh wants him, he doesn't much care what for. It's pathetic and undignified. He feels the same way about Agatha. He'll never be a good person, but he can do good things to please them. He'll never _deserve_ their love, but as long as they give it anyway he can only offer every piece of his soul for recompense. And if it will give Gilgamesh some satisfaction to beat him senseless, he can only try to bear it long enough.

The next hit is an open-handed slap, barely hard enough to interrupt his breathing. "You're such a conceited idiot," Gil continues, still sounding ridiculously cheerful about it. "I could break you one-handed. She said you can dodge, but you can't take a hit. She was only talking about fighting -" another casual punch - "but I don't have to hit you, do I? If I really want to hurt you all I have to do is _tell the truth_."

"Which part? The part where I ran your empire for you?" The dig is automatic, flung out before he can stop it. There's no point in starting small; Tarvek might pass out before they can go through every little grievance.

Gil must agree, because he says, "The part where you betrayed Agatha to keep a deal with the Other."

The rain of blows that come after, Tarvek barely notices. He's too busy trying not to burst into tears from sheer guilty horror. Gil was absolutely right, he doesn't have to touch Tarvek to break him. They've never had it out over that. He had hoped, stupidly, that they never would.

"I'm sure you had some clever reason," Gil says, and his hands close on Tarvek's throat. "Care to tell me what?"

He needs a breath to gather his thoughts, and he doesn't have it. He can only be honest. Tarvek manages, "I thought the Baron _was_ -"

"What?!" Gil isn't quite screaming.

But his fingers are tightening on Tarvek's neck, and there are dark spots swimming in front of his eyes and blood pounding in his ears and not enough air to answer. He yanks on the chains instead, hoping the noise will be distracting.

It must work, because Gil lets go and slams his shoulders against the wall instead. "Well?"

"Was working with her," Tarvek gasps, and closes his eyes so he doesn't have to look at Gilgamesh. "I thought he'd known. I thought they were in it together. I thought he'd come back knowing Europa was too beaten down to resist him when he took over."

He's surprised, a little, he got through all that without being hit again. He waits for the next blow, gasping.

It doesn't come. Instead there's a hand winding into his hair, tender until it goes tight and yanks his head up. There's Spark ringing at the edges of Gilgamesh's next words. " _What changed your mind?_ "

"Something Lucrezia said she was surprised the Empire existed if he'd switched sides it was long ago he might even have stolen the Holy Child," Tarvek manages, all in one gasp. The hand in his hair slams his head back against the wall. He'd never meant to hurt Gilgamesh with this particular line of reasoning, even if it was true. "And the Vespiary Squad proved he wasn't trying to steal her wasps and use them for himself even if he was confiscating Hive Engines please I never thought he was working with the ghost ladies just stealing Lucrezia's plan."

"You thought my _father_ was trying to _use slaver wasps_ and you never _told me_?" Somehow Gil's voice low and crackling with fugue is more terrifying than his full-on screaming.

Tarvek makes himself open his eyes, but between the blow to the skull, his missing glasses, and the tears he's desperately holding back, he doesn't have a hope of focusing them. "I never thought you had anything to do with it, Gilgamesh, I didn't think you even suspected."

The hand in his hair drops away. Tarvek waits, and tries to blink his eyes clear, but they refuse to clear.

Then there's another blow, to the stomach this time, so gentle he only has to tense a little to bear it. Gil's voice hissing, "Do you _know_ how to do _anything_ but _lie_?"

"Now I do," he babbles, desperate. For the accusations to stop, for the pain to keep going, Tarvek's not sure. "I trust you, you'd never - we're on Agatha's side now."

The hands close on his throat again. Despite all the logical reasons it wouldn't happen, despite knowing Gilgamesh even in the middle of all this screaming hasn't hit him in the face, something in the back of Tarvek's mind wonders if he's about to have an unfortunate lab accident. He would deserve it. He's always deserved that and for some reason they went to ridiculous lengths to keep him around instead, even if they had to kill him to do it -

But instead, quite suddenly, there's nothing. He's gasping for breath, slumped down and only held upright by the chains, and no one is touching him at all.

Then something lifts his head back again, and he can just barely make out Gil's backlit shape through the haze of tears. "I suppose we are," Gil says, voice quite ordinary. "Even you must have worked that out by now."

"Yes." His voice is ragged and quivering; talking hurts. He'll have to keep his collars buttoned up for a week.

"Which doesn't mean we're done."

Tarvek doesn't bother to answer. He has to save his strength.

Sure enough, the next blow is back on his bruised ribs, driving his breath away. It comes with a yell that makes him glad for the thick stone walls. "For _example!_ You've never so much as _pretended_ to apologize for letting the Florwinter sisters _escape_. Did you _owe_ them something or do you just like poisoners on _principle_?" Is Gilgamesh trying to break his ribs or is he hitting the same place over and over by accident? "And then you let that _adder_ loose in Colette's room -" The next hit is just under his ribs, hard on the diaphragm.

It's just as well he's not trying to talk; he doesn't have the strength to listen. None of these things matter, anyway, not next to what Tarvek confessed and Gil did no worse than choke him for, for all that he must have wanted to bring out the hot pokers. There's no point protesting. Tarvek will pass out soon enough, he expects.

Is that a bad idea? Should he beg Gilgamesh to stop, instead? The yelling is coming from somewhere very far away, and the blows barely hurt. Gil would stop, if he begged, but it would cost him, the whole point was to let him work through his anger. This isn't the worst pain Tarvek has ever felt. He can still breathe, for all that every breath runs short, every motion of his chest is a fresh serving of pain. He'll have to get into the nepenthe to keep his smile on in the morning.

He notices, distantly, that Gil's voice has gone back to that low, dangerous hiss. "And for someone _obsessed_ with the Muses you were certainly _careless_ about Tinka. But maybe you don't care if you break your _dolls_ -"

Tarvek should be angry. He can't feel anything right now but a numb distant pain, the hits are no more jarring than his own breaths now, which is probably a good reason to stop before he _does_ have a broken rib he can't hide with nepenthe and Movit Three, it all makes perfect sense, and he thinks all that in retrospect and listens to the echo of his own scream of "Mercy -" turned into a piteous noise like a dying kitten. Anevka never bothered to start with the larynx.

It shouldn't be a surprise that Gilgamesh stops.

After all, it's not as if the pain stops. Tarvek holds his breath, which isn't enough, and tries to slip out of the chains without scraping his wrists on them or needing to open his eyes. He sinks to his knees. The floor feels cold through two layers of fabric, and he doesn't dare lie down.

Gil is rubbing his shoulder, gently, tentatively. "Tarvek?"

He should answer that, shouldn't he? But the idea of speaking feels too complicated. He nods. The chill is seeping into his bones.

"Do you want your glasses?"

He manages another nod, and Gilgamesh slips the glasses back onto his nose. It's no improvement, the room is still dark and his eyes are still blurry, but the familiar weight is a comfort, enough that Tarvek makes an attempt at talking through his bruised throat. The words come sluggishly. "In my left jacket pocket," breathe in, "is a small blue bottle. Give it to me."

It takes Gil two tries to find the hidden pocket, which doesn't speak well for his state of mind. He finds it, though, and Tarvek manages to keep his hands steady long enough to undo the cap and press the needle into his own wrist.

It takes effect quickly, a dozen heartbeats to spread. It's not that Tarvek isn't in pain anymore, but the pain doesn't feel relevant; his sluggish muscles are twitching with inactivity, and cold as he still is, it's as unimportant as the knowledge of how bad he'll feel tomorrow. Movit Three is wonderful stuff.

Gilgamesh is watching him, not touching, looking like he isn't sure what to say. Tarvek wonders if the Movit was a bad idea. At least the pain was distracting; now his mind is clear, it's filling up with guilt and horror, the perpetual memories he usually manages to supress of just how awful a person he was, before Agatha plucked him out of the mire and decided he was worth salvaging.

No. He can't think about that right now, he has to make sure Gilgamesh is alright. Tarvek grabs Gil's hands, folding them together between his own. "You're brooding," he says, trying to keep it soft enough for a joke. "That's my job, isn't it?"

"I think there's enough for two of us." Gil heaves a sigh, but he doesn't pull his hands away. "You were right, that was - cathartic. But now I just have more to be angry at you about."

"Would you have believed me? I didn't have any proof. Just motives, and a few things my father said. And obviously, it was completely wrong."

Gilgamesh's mouth twists in a half-smile. The bitter expression isn't at home on his face. "And if you were right -"

"I couldn't have asked you to go against your father."

The look Gil gives him is long and calculating and for a moment Tarvek has the uncomfortable sense he's being played. But then it transmutes into another heavy sigh, and Gil unfolds himself from the floor, tugging Tarvek upright with him over his protesting yelp. "Come on, I think you can get all the way to your own bed," he declares, and throws Tarvek's shirt at his head.

\--

Gil's courage lasts until Tarvek is under four blankets and making only token protests, and then he beats a hasty retreat to his own room to brood.

If he tries to think of it from Tarvek's perspective, steeped in cynical selfishness and knowing as soon as he could talk that anything spoken could be a lie - he can see it. He can see how someone could look at the last twenty years of Europan politics, ask themselves _Cui bono?_ and answer _Klaus Wulfenbach_ , and conclude that it was more likely he'd taken over Lucrezia's plan than upended it.

Gil picks up a forgotten teacup, and starts spinning it while he thinks. Of course that isn't how it happened. His father has principles. Gil knows that. He knows exactly how far those principles went. He knows he shouldn't follow that train of thought any further. He has enough to brood about.

Starting with the part where he chained someone to a wall and beat them half to death with his bare hands.

Someone who deserved it, someone who _asked_ him to, he's clinging to both of those. He thinks he understands a little of why Tarvek asked. It had felt - not good exactly, when it was Gil's turn, but satisfying. Enough to shut up the little piece of his mind that's always asking if he picked the right minion to delegate to, if he really understands how this piece of machinery works, if he's working hard enough for the luxury of a night's rest. "No" is at least a decisive answer.

He must have misjudged the momentum of the leftover tea, because the cup tips over, dumping cold tea all over him and bouncing to the floor. Gil is too startled to try to catch it. He settles for remembering which way it rolled as he pulls his tea-splotted shirt off, and tries to bat the armchair dry. Distracted, he needs to be less distracted. Or maybe he - hah - just needs more sleep.

He stopped when Tarvek begged him to. He would be satisfied that he didn't let himself go. Except - He went exactly as far as he wanted to. Made Tarvek scream and cry and admit things that must have festered under his skin for years, but did nothing he wouldn't recover from. Nothing Tarvek wouldn't give him willingly. It still feels strange that Tarvek trusts him so far.

Strange but satisfying.

\--

The Movit Three presents its bill by morning, as Tarvek had known it would, in the shape of aching muscles, blood pounding in his ears, and a persistent sense that his body is operating at a remove from his mind, like a marionette. It's been months since his mind slipped out of gear, and the sensation is no longer familiar. But he hasn't lost the knack of working through it; he decides to sit up and swing his legs off the bed, and after a second's delay, his body follows.

Which is as far as he gets before the throbbing pain of his bruised ribs presents itself again. Tarvek takes deep, careful breaths, holding on to the ache at his throat. He weighs the idea of ringing for coffee, but letting anyone see him like this, even a kitchen maid who almost certainly wouldn't care, feels too much like a weakness.

It's been a long time since Tarvek allowed himself the luxury of staying in bed all day just because he couldn't face the world.

Eventually he stumbles into the bathroom for a glass of water, brushes his hair, and retrieves some back-issues of the Journal de le Société Archéologique de l'Étrange from the increasingly-precarious pile on his desk. He's most of two years in, and the sun is edging close to its peak, before he dozes off again.

He wakes to the sound of the door opening, and Agatha's footsteps. It's far too late to pull the blankets over his head and pretend not to be there.

"Hey," she says gently, and the bed creaks as she sits down. Her hand feels cool on his neck.

Tarvek tries not to wince, and essays a fond smile. "My lady."

"You know exactly how much of an idiot you were, so it's no use yelling, right?"

Tarvek opens his eyes. She's back in her everyday blouse and toolbelt, hair glimmering in the afternoon sun, so radiant even when she's glaring at him that he wants to fall at her feet and beg to stay with her forever. As always. "How did you find out?"

"Zeetha told me." A huff of annoyance, and the hand on his neck traces the bruises, making them throb. "What were you _thinking_? You're not Jägers."

"No, but we thought it might be a good idea to get it out of our systems. Gil was fine the next day. You can't get too angry at me for that." She just keeps looking at him, and as always Tarvek breaks down under the intensity of it. "It felt good to be allowed to scream. We just - it's hard to remember sometimes. That we're on the same side. No matter how much we love each other."

"I still wish you'd stick to smart remarks," Agatha says, but she lets go of his neck and starts stroking his hair instead. Tarvek leans into it, wishing he could purr. "Are you going to be up and about by dinnertime? The Transylvania Polygnostic Orchestra finally turned up, and their carillonist says she's found a way to inhibit short-term memory with Mazerkov harmonics. I want your opinion."

Does she have to ask? For a technical problem like that, he'd crawl out of his tomb. "Could you fetch my watch?"

Agatha watches with a thoughtful frown as he spins the alarm hand to six, sets the hammer, and tucks it beneath his pillow. "Is that thing still completely mundane? I don't know how you make the parts fit."

"Patience, delicacy, and, er, a willingness to make your little clanks carve gears for me." He blushes. It's absurd. "But a jeweler with a steady enough hand and a big enough magnifier could duplicate it. It's not Sparkwork."

"No? Well, at least part of your mind makes sense. Go on, sleep, I'll tell Gil you're recovering."

"He asked?"

"He pretended not to know why you weren't in the library." Agatha kisses his cheek. "Go back to sleep. You can yell at each other after dinner."

 _As my lady commands,_ Tarvek doesn't say, because he's already obeying. There's no point fighting it. He'll worry about Gilgamesh later.

They have the rest of their lives to worry in.

\--


End file.
